> Joe Thurbon wrote:>>> On Fri, 24 Apr 2009 03:32:22 +1000, Bob Badour >> <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:>> [...]>>>>> My name is Bob, I have property in Canada, my house is 114 years old.>>> {name=Bob,place=Canada,age=114)>>>>>> Different questionnaires. Different tables. A column for each >>> question. A row for each respondent. All described neatly in the >>> system catalog.>> My name is Joe, I have property in Australia, my house if 40 years old.>> Just wondering, if one of the requirements for a system included>> something like 'Be able to list all questionnaires', would>> you still consider one-table-per-questionairre a reasonable design?>> Absolutely. It's a simple query from the system catalog.>

Am I right in saying that there is no standard structure for the
system catalog? (Not that that is really germane in a theory newsgroup)

>>> I think that there is a more abstract question trying to get out>> of my head. Maybe it's: 'When relations become things that>> have facts asserted about them, should one stop treating them as>> relations, and normalise further?" (where normalise is almost certainly>> the wrong word, but I'm not sure what the right one is.)>> You must not be phrasing that well. All interesting relations have facts > asserted about them. Degree. Cardinality. Functional dependencies. etc.

Of course, you are right.

Which unfortunately means that my question is now going to have to be
asked as a series of problems.

(I've just snipped such a problem from this post, because my reply
to Gene in this thread ended up being a more succinct description of it).